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Historical Fiction April 2021
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| Dangerous Women by Hope AdamsWhat it is: a moving, well-researched debut novel inspired by the true story of the 1841 voyage of the ship Rajah as it transported a group of female convicts to Tasmania.
What goes wrong: As an intricate but tenuous web of connections develops between the women onboard, the violent death of a passenger threatens to unearth a multitude of secrets beyond the identity of the murderer.
For fans of: locked-room murder mysteries and ensemble casts. |
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| Vera by Carol EdgarianWhat it's about: chosen family, resilience, and coming-of-age, set against the backdrop San Francisco just after the massive 1906 earthquake.
Starring: Vera, the 15-year-old daughter of emotionally distant Barbary Coast madam Rose; Swedish-American Pie, Vera's pragmatic foster sister; Lifang, Vera's half-Chinese half-sister who enjoys a much closer relationship with their mother.
You might also like: A Splendid Ruin by Megan Chance, which follows another feisty young woman making a life for herself in the devastated city. |
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| A Thousand Ships by Natalie HaynesWhat it is: an atmospheric and witty retelling of the Trojan War, from the shifting perspectives of both familiar and unfamiliar female characters.
Starring: the goddess Calliope, who decides to make the most of her role as a Muse; Penelope, who starts losing patience after learning why it's taking so long for her husband Odysseus to return; Oenone, who was abandoned by her husband Paris for Helen of Sparta.
About the author: Classicist and comedian Natalie Haynes is a regular contributor to The Sunday Telegraph and The Independent. Her previous works include the novels The Furies and The Children of Jocasta, children's book The Great Escape, and the nonfiction book The Ancient Guide to Modern Life. |
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| The Slaughterman's Daughter by Yaniv IczkovitsWhat it's about: In this stylistically complex novel, a Jewish woman in late 19th-century Russia uses the skills she learned from her father (a ritual animal slaughterer) for self-defense, setting off an unexpected and and dramatic chain of events.
Read it for: the satisfying mix of fable, observational humor, and cat-and-mouse journey through Jewish communities in tsarist-era Russia and Ukraine.
Reviewers say: "Ever entertaining, Iczkovits’s lively, transportive picaresque takes readers on a memorable ride" (Publishers Weekly). |
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| Those Who Are Saved by Alexis LandauWhat it is: a compelling and thought-provoking story of survival and family separation set during the Nazi occupation of France.
Vichy France, 1940: Russian Jewish émigrés Vera and Max Volosenkova entrust their young daughter Lucie to governess Agnes after being ordered to report to an "internment" camp.
California, 1945: Although the couple were unexpectedly given a chance to escape Nazi custody, there was no way to return for their daughter along the way. The war now over, Vera is desperate to get back to France to search for Lucie in the postwar sea of refugees. |
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The secrets of midwives
by Sally Hepworth
Determined to hide the identity of her baby's father from others, a third-generation midwife is separated from and bound to her mother and grandmother by a similar secret from the past.
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Glass boys : a novel
by Nicole Lundrigan
After his brother is killed, Lewis blames the alcoholic, Eli Fagan, but years after the court rules it an accident, the darkness of the past begins to reappear, leading Lewis back to Eli Fagan and his stepson, Garrett Glass
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The maze at Windermere
by Gregory Blake Smith
A reckless, high-stakes wager between a fading tennis pro and a drunken party guest launches a narrative odyssey that brings three centuries of ambition and adversity full circle. By the award-winning author of The Law of Miracles.
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| House of Gold by Natasha SolomonsThe premise: In 1911, strong-willed Austrian heiress Greta Goldbaum moved to England to marry a man she didn't know for the sake of her family's business interests. Though they get off to a rough start, Greta and her new husband build a life together, and soon they fall in love for real.
The problem: At the outbreak of World War I, Greta finds herself torn between her family of origin and the family she has created, both of which are threatened by the increasing antisemitism that's spreading across Europe.
For fans of: Barbara Taylor Bradford's Cavendon Hall, another family saga steeped in doomed Belle Époque glamour in the run-up to World War I. |
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Gold Mountain blues
by Ling Zhang
A rich saga chronicling the lives of five generations of a Chinese family from Guandong Province transformed by the promise of a better life in Gold Mountain, the Chinese name for Canada's majestic West Coast.
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Contact your librarian for more great books?
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